


One Summer Dream

by Experimental



Series: Big Wheels [2]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Consensual Infidelity, Domestic, Established Relationship, Ethical Dilemmas, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Mobile Suits & Gundams, No Frozen Teardrop, Parenthood, Requited Love, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23102749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experimental/pseuds/Experimental
Summary: Quatre thought he understood when Dorothy said she envied the way Trowa looked at him. The way Trowa never looked at anyone else, not even her.But he never truly got it until he watched Trowa with his daughter.
Relationships: Trowa Barton/Dorothy Catalonia, Trowa Barton/Quatre Raberba Winner
Series: Big Wheels [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1694722
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	1. Soft Hair, See-Through Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This story is technically a sequel or epilogue of sorts to [_Big Wheels_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/146921/chapters/210144), in that it takes place roughly five years after the events of that fic (18 years after the Eve Wars). But I hesitate to call the two a "series," as the first one really was written to stand on its own. Reading _Big Wheels_ shouldn't be a prerequisite. I've tried to write this story in such a way that readers can pick up all the necessary details as they go along. 
> 
> I was inspired to pick this timeline up again after finally reading translations of _Frozen Teardrop_ , which started publishing about the same time as _Big Wheels_. I suppose one might call this my attempt to find points of convergence between two very different futures. May it please.

From approach, the vast, well-manicured grounds of the Catalonia estate seemed like a child's play set: elegant mansions and adjoining facilities all laid out in miniature. It looked so empty from above, so serene. So self-contained. Not for the first time, Quatre worried he might be intruding on that peace and quiet. Maybe he shouldn't have come.

The moment his transport landed, however, it became clear just how much that peace and quiet was an illusion of scale and distance. From the ground, it appeared as though Dorothy's entire staff—those of it that were left on Earth, that was—had turned out to greet his.

Only when Quatre's eyes met his did Trowa's lips pull up in a slight smile. He stepped forward to meet Quatre halfway, heartily taking the hand that was offered him.

“Did you have a good flight in?” Trowa had to raise his voice over the roar of the tiltrotor's engines to make himself heard.

“No issues to report. It was just long as hell, is all.”

“The usual, then. You must be starving. Let's get you and your people inside and settled.”

But first, Trowa led him through the requisite introductions. Quatre personally greeted and shook hands with everyone who had gathered on the tarmac to meet him, from cooks to secretaries to security. Then Quatre's staff, juggling briefcases and bags as they followed behind him, did the same.

There was just one person missing. Well, two, but Quatre already knew Dorothy's whereabouts. “Is she here?” he asked Trowa.

“Inside napping,” Trowa said, with a sort of pride that, coming from him at least, was new to Quatre. But not unbecoming. No, not in the least. “Your arrival might have woken her up, though. I'm sure you'll meet her soon.”

“I can't wait.”

That wasn't entirely the truth. Quatre's stomach had been tied up in knots the whole descent just thinking about this meeting. He was eager for it to happen, but dreaded it in equal measure. Best not to rush things.

The first step inside the Catalonia mansion was always a treat to be savored. Quatre was used to the opulence by now, and the excess that it was only possible to display so wantonly on Earth. He couldn't help but smile at the way his staff, to a man or woman, stopped in their stride to take it all in. The Maguanacs in his security detail had at least seen underground fortresses as vaulted and mosques as richly gilded, but Quatre's young aide was so overwhelmed by the sight her jaw literally dropped.

They soon split up, Dorothy's people ushering Quatre's to a wing of the estate where they could unpack and set up a base of operations away from home. A couple of the Maguanacs made to stay with Quatre, but he assured them, “I'll be fine. The security here is second to none.”

“But, Master Quatre—”

“I think I can handle coffee with Trowa on my own.”

Besides, they knew Trowa from back in the trenches. Even if both ex-gundam pilots' positions had changed radically since then, Trowa was still the same young man the Maguanacs had decided to trust with the location of their hidden base, if only because Quatre trusted him.

“If this is what you call going on vacation,” Trowa quipped dryly when the two of them were finally alone, “I'd hate to see what your business trips look like.”

“I'm sure it's controlled chaos around here, too,” Quatre said, “when Dorothy's home. Did you know this was what you were signing up for, marrying into the Catalonia Group?”

“It's no more chaotic than the circus was. Eight shows a week, unless we were on the road. As long as I get a chance to breathe every now and then, I can't complain.”

No, Quatre supposed he couldn't. Trowa might not have looked it, with his preternatural calm, but he was the kind of person who thrived in chaos. If things ever slowed down around him, that's when he would have to start worrying about the direction his life had taken.

A china coffee set and bundt cake had already been laid out for them in a quiet sitting room. Only moments ago, judging by the steam that escaped the coffee pot. The windows were open to let in a warm summer breeze, and though Quatre's bodyguards would have had words for him about the exposure of his position, particularly after the two attempts on his life five years ago, Quatre had no doubt that Dorothy's virtually invisible security extended to the very edges of the estate grounds. He had nothing to fear here.

Except perhaps having Trowa's company all to himself. Perhaps, Quatre thought, he should have feared that more than he did.

“Now that the race is heating up,” Trowa said by-the-by as he poured the coffee, “I suppose I'll have to take these moments while I can. There'll be no rest once Dorothy is president of the Unified Nation.”

“You're confident,” Quatre said.

“I've no reason to mistrust the polls.”

If Quatre knew him at all, however, it was his own research that Trowa really trusted. “And Dorothy has been planning this for some time. She isn't the type to invest her resources and energy into a project with such high stakes unless she's sure she can win.”

Trowa hummed in agreement at that. They both knew Dorothy so well.

He crossed one leg casually over the other as he picked up his cup. “The only thing I wasn't prepared for is how fast it's all happening. Five years now seems like a lifetime ago, when you look at how much we've been able to accomplish.”

“Your Ursa and Orion suits have been a godsend to us,” Quatre was pleased to report. “Colonies are being completed in record time—”

“Thanks in no small part to the Winner Corporation for its material contributions. I'm still not entirely happy with the current Orion models. Maybe you can take a look at some of the changes I'm toying with for the next rollout while you're here.”

“I think you're being modest,” Quatre said to his coffee, a fond smile spreading over his face. “But I'd be happy to be your second opinion. I just hope what we're doing is enough to keep up with demand.”

“If mankind keeps expanding like this, we're going to outgrow the Earth Sphere within our lifetimes, and I'm not sure Mars is ready to take the overflow. In the past, wars kept the population in check. However—”

“Neither one of us wants to see another war.”

“That we do not.”

Trowa furrowed his brows, the line of his mouth tightening before he forced it to loosen with a sip.

It hit Quatre then for a second time how the last five years had changed Trowa. He was only thirty-four, but the light through the windows illuminated slight creases in the corners of Trowa's eyes that Quatre would swear weren't there before.

The Trowa Quatre had spoken candidly with on C-421 would not have responded to the possibility of another war with such clear disdain, either. He might have even said something glib about another war making him feel useful again. He must still struggle with his past as a killer, Quatre thought. How could Trowa not? But the subject of war seemed to have taken on a new context for him. Not as something to come to terms with in the past, but as something to be avoided in the future, and at all costs.

Quatre almost said Trowa sounded as though he had been spending time with Relena, but thought better of it. It would have been cruel to be facetious when Trowa was being so sincere.

In any case, the door creaking open saved Quatre from having to break the silence himself.

“I'm sorry to bother you, sir,” the woman behind it said, “I know you have company. . . .” And she could not have failed to recognize that company as the president of the L4 cluster.

Trowa shot to his feet before she could finish, his cup rattling in its saucer. “No bother at all. Come in—both of you.”

For his part, Quatre could only stare. Not at the demurely dressed woman who pushed the door open further, but at the toddler who had been hiding behind it, shyly but openly staring back at Quatre. The stranger from another world.

Trowa bent and swung the toddler up into his arms, whispering something to her that wasn't meant for Quatre to hear. The little girl gave Trowa a sideways look before her stare locked back on Quatre, and it nearly bowled Quatre over. He'd seen Dorothy give him the exact same side-eye on more than one occasion. Except where Dorothy's were cloudy blue, the little girl's eyes were a clear olive green, and seemed older than her years.

“Quatre, I'd like you to meet Catrina Catalonia,” Trowa said as the two returned to the coffee table. “Cat, this here is Quatre Raberba Winner, my very best friend in the whole world.”

Quatre wasn't sure what wounded him the deepest: the way Trowa glowed when he whispered those words fondly into the little girl's mop of pale blond hair, or the girl's name. Maybe he shouldn't read too much into it. She could easily have been named after Cathrine Bloom. Or Katrina Peacecraft.

But she could have been named after Quatre. Or Quatre and Relena both, for that matter, a portmanteau of her parents' closest friends. Quatre wasn't sure he wanted to know which was the truth.

Finally he remembered his manners and stood, executing a bow. “It's an honor to make your acquaintance, Miss Catalonia.”

Earning an amused sound from Trowa. “No need to be so formal. She's only three. Besides, 'Miss Catalonia' is what everyone still calls her mother.”

“Then . . . what should I call her?” Quatre blinked at Trowa. For all his experience with Duo's son and the Maguanacs' kids, he still felt like he knew next to nothing about how to talk to children.

“Catrina will do fine,” Trowa told him, and Quatre could see in the sudden sobriety of his eyes that he had already guessed Quatre's trouble.

Quatre tried to start over again on the right foot, but Catrina turned and buried her face in Trowa's shoulder instead, her little arms tightening around his neck.

“She's shy with strangers,” Trowa apologized for her as he and Quatre took their seats again. “Give her some time to figure you out and she'll warm up to you.”

“She looks just like you.” At last, Quatre could keep that thought to himself no longer. It had startled him, unnerved him even, seeing Trowa's same defiant eyes and taciturn mouth in such a young face. He wasn't sure what he had expected. A different child from the photographs in the press? Quatre couldn't honestly say he'd put it past Dorothy to use a decoy for her own daughter.

Trowa laughed low in his throat at the observation. “Dorothy and I like to joke that Cat got her brains and my good looks.”

“Not a bad combination,” Quatre said. The best of both worlds—two equally superior worlds.

“She's a lucky kid,” Trowa agreed, “all things considered.”

Lucky wasn't the half of it, from where Quatre was sitting. Only suddenly he didn't know what to say to his old friend.

More than ever Quatre felt like an outsider in Dorothy's home. For all he had been looking forward to spending his vacation here, it seemed as though Dorothy had left this child to represent her in her absence—another reminder that her claim on Trowa was complete. How could Quatre expect there to be any room left in that heart for him now?

Catrina started to fuss in Trowa's lap, and he said to her in the same voice Quatre imagined him using with the lions in the circus: “What's up, Little Cat? Think you can be patient for a few minutes? I'm sure Quatre would like a chance to relax after his long flight.”

“Honestly?” Quatre chuckled. “What I could really use is some fresh air and a chance to stretch my legs.”

Trowa knew just what he meant without another word. “Why not. It's a nice day. Let's go for a walk.”

* * *

The historic Catalonia family estate went on and on with no end in sight. There were meticulously curated gardens for every official occasion, and greenbelts where nature had been left to take her course. Through it all threaded maintained pathways.

Past the manicured lawns and vineyards, the fountains and tennis courts, the three of them found a field studded with wildflowers in which to sit and enjoy the perfect weather. Trowa plucked Catrina up off his shoulders, on which she had been riding for most of their walk, and let her down, and the little girl instantly gravitated to a ladybug perched on one of the flowers.

Quatre shrugged out of his suit jacket and folded it over his arm before taking a seat in the grass. He'd probably have green stains when he stood up again, but he didn't care. How often did he get to spend a day like this on Earth? Certainly it was a rarity these days.

He wondered what he always wondered when he was planet-side: Did the people of the Earth know how beautiful their world was? Did they appreciate the miracle on which they lived, or take it all for granted?

“Do you ever get tired of all this?” he asked Trowa.

“Do you ever get homesick for the Colonies?” Trowa returned his serve.

Maybe they were both complicated questions, with complicated answers. “The Colonies have their advantages, but they could never come close to replicating this,” Quatre said, “no matter how hard they tried. The smells and the weather—not to mention the bugs,” he added with a nod in Catrina's direction, “and all this _open space_. . . .”

“It's excessive, I know.”

“That's not what I meant at all.”

Sure, space in the Colonies came at a premium; that was simply the nature of the beast. It was one thing to install a park and living, growing things, knowing the human psyche suffered without it, but even the size of a park was a delicately weighed matter. It had to be balanced against necessary infrastructure, and the constant demand for more housing. Even if someday the Colonies managed to produce something approaching a natural ecosystem, the sky above it could never look like the sky as seen from Earth.

Knowing there was nothing between himself and the vacuum of space but air was both awesome and terrifying to a Colony-born. During the war, it was weeks after touchdown before Quatre could look up and not feel a wave of vertigo threaten to wash over him, some irrational fear that he was going to fly off the planet and into that fathomless blue.

Even now, as he leaned back on the heels of his hands to stare up at the space between the clouds, Quatre felt he could almost but not quite grasp the true immensity of it. It was like staring into a pool that just went deeper and deeper and never seemed to have a bottom. Even knowing how far away the distant stars were, he only rarely felt the same way in space. Perhaps because there was always something _between_ him and the vacuum, whether it be an astrosuit or a thick plate of glass. Something keeping him safe and surrounded, and separate.

There was no such thing as “separate” on the Earth. Yet Quatre still felt like an island here, an alien.

While Quatre watched the sky, Trowa watched him. That was his vista, Quatre supposed. His rarified view.

“You would never get used to it if you stayed,” Trowa said. “You'd always find some new sight or smell to take your breath away. That's just the kind of person you are, Quatre. You've always seen the best in everything.”

“And you're so jaded already?”

“Well,” Trowa began. But he didn't seem to have anything more to say to that and soon closed his mouth and leaned back on an elbow.

“My childhood was not as sheltered as yours,” he settled for after a little while. “But I'm starting to make up for lost time. I think I'm beginning to see what all the fuss is about. Simply being able to take your shoes off and sink your toes into the silt at the bottom of a lake, for example—”

“You've become quite the romantic,” Quatre laughed.

But then he caught himself. Of course Trowa hadn't just discovered that feeling. He'd had hundreds of opportunities to curl his toes in a lake bottom while he was on Earth as a child soldier, or during the Eve Wars. Then Trowa had seen the Earth through his own eyes. He didn't always like what he saw.

But now he had new eyes to see through.

As if reading Quatre's thoughts, Trowa glanced over at where Catrina was picking herself a bouquet of wild clover blossoms for closer inspection. Concentrating so thoroughly on her work, the objectives of which were known only to her, it was as though she'd completely forgotten the other two were there beside her.

Trowa sighed through his nose as he watched her. He couldn't help himself. He reached out and tried to smooth a few locks of wind-tousled hair out of her eyes, but the strands were so fine they only ended up sticking in different directions, like dandelion fuzz.

Watching Trowa with his daughter, Quatre found it hard to breathe. As if he were floating alone in the darkness of space, running low on oxygen. He thought he'd understood Dorothy before, when she confessed to Quatre that she was jealous of the way Trowa looked at him. The way he never looked at anyone else, not even her.

But he hadn't. Quatre hadn't really understood her meaning until right now.

And when he did, it just about killed him.

* * *

The long table in the grand dining room was used to seating Earth's bluest-blooded noblemen and -women, dignitaries from Brussels and the Colonies, and celebrities of all stripes, dressed to the nines in white ties and evening gowns.

If it felt strange for Dorothy's household staff and Quatre's personal one to all be eating there together in plainclothes, however, no one let on. There were no cameras to put on a show for, no principles on which to stand. Conversation flowed light and easy, the only bumps as far as Quatre was concerned being the formality with which Dorothy's staff insisted on treating him. But he could only tell them so many times to call him “Mr. Winner” before he had to accept answering to “Mr. President,” even if he was not _their_ president.

Trowa didn't fare much better. A few of Quatre's female staff members were starstruck over Trowa's looks and charismatic manner, which in their view must have been responsible, at least in part, for the circus's meteoric rise during the years he was with it.

“I was lucky enough to see one of your last shows with the company,” Quatre's junior secretary Rahel told him. “I was sixteen at the time.” She blushed, remembering. “I actually cried a little when I heard you were leaving the show. I have to confess I had a bit of a crush on you then.”

“Didn't we all?” her colleague said. “It didn't matter that you were one of the gundam pilots. The gundams were our saviors in the end. As far as my friends and I were concerned, Triton Bloom wasn't just the hottest clown around, he could swoop in with that gundam of his and save us any day of the week! Er, no offense, Mr. Winner, sir.”

“None taken,” Quatre laughed. If he had any say in the matter, he would rather his time as Sandrock's pilot not be fodder for young ladies' fantasies.

He suspected Trowa was less than flattered by the thought, too, but he hid it well behind a demure “I'm glad to know you were entertained” that the two young women were sure to treasure forever.

“Ms. Catalonia is blessed to have someone like you by her side, supporting her at home and in the Colonies. I can't imagine a lot of husbands would be content to play second fiddle to their wives in public—at least,” Rahel amended, “not on L4.”

That power imbalance was one thing Quatre was seeking to change in his home cluster. He hated that his older sisters had been deemed insufficient successors by L4's old guard and the Winner Corporation board, for no other reason than that they were Zayeed Winner's daughters and not his sons.

But slowly times and attitudes were changing. Quatre himself planned to choose from among his sisters' children when the time came to appoint an heir; two adult nieces already topped the list. And if Dorothy was successful in her bid for President of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation, it would represent a huge step in a new direction. One that Quatre could only hope was the right direction. The last era was decided by old men desperate to hold on to their own power at any cost, and what did mankind gain from it but wars of attrition?

“Well, I think anyone who reduces Dorothy Catalonia to someone's wife,” Quatre said, “does so at their own peril. She's poised to become the most powerful woman in the Earth Sphere. I'd say anyone playing second fiddle to that has moved up quite nicely in the world.”

Trowa nodded his thanks and quickly changed the subject. He didn't seem daunted about becoming the “First Dude”—as Duo liked to put it—of the Unified Nation, but it could not have been comfortable to be spoken of in the third person, as if he were a child or a piece of artwork in the room.

Something about Trowa had dimmed since he'd been living here, Quatre noticed. Or, if not dimmed, condensed. Like a wild animal that's been put in a cage—even if it was a gilded one with plenty of fenced-in yard in which to roam. Quatre saw it in the footage of Dorothy and Trowa's appearances together, or the photographs in the press. He saw it in his old friend's eyes: Trowa had been tamed.

And now that it had finally happened, Quatre wasn't sure he liked it.

After dinner, the group retired to one of the mansion's sitting rooms, and somehow the conversation drifted toward music.

At Trowa's casual mention, Quatre's younger staffers turned to him in surprise. “You play the violin?”

“I knew about the piano, but how come you never mentioned you played other instruments?”

By this point, Trowa was already on his feet, and making his way to a cabinet on the far side of the room. He stood before it like a dueler trying to decide on his weapon, a fond smile on his face as he listened to Quatre trying to curb his staff's excitement by claiming he was out of practice.

Quatre knew what he was up to even before Trowa took a violin from the cabinet, giving it a good looking over like he was reading the label of an old wine bottle, and said, “Think it might come back to you?”

“Oh, no, I really couldn't—”

“At least give it a try, sir,” Rahel said, and the Maguanacs chimed in, “Come on, Master Quatre, be a good sport. The muscle memory must still be there, right? Just like piloting a mobile suit!”

Trowa handed over the violin, and, before he lifted it to his chin, Quatre shot him a glare that said there would be retribution for this. Quatre passed the bow over the strings to warm them both up, tuned a couple that sounded just a hair off-key, and began to play.

It was the same song he'd played at the Maguanac safe house all those years ago, if some of the notes or his feel for the tune had been lost from lack of practice. The performance sounded juvenile to Quatre's ears, squeaky, even at the slower tempo. He regretted that he had not given the violin the regular attention it required since the Eve Wars ended, but back then, at the start of hostilities, the drills Professor H had put him through had been fresh in Quatre's mind and in his fingertips. He was almost embarrassed his staff had to hear him play so poorly.

But all that vanished when he heard the first tentative notes of Trowa's flute joining in. Quatre turned to watch Trowa as he played, a smile spreading across Quatre's lips and a warmth through his heart. He forgot to be embarrassed. The pure joy of creating something together with a kindred spirit took over, and Quatre happily surrendered himself to it.

Until he neared the end of the song and abruptly realized he couldn't remember how it went. He lowered the violin with an apology.

But his staff's applause drowned it out. “You sure you two didn't plan this ahead of time?” asked Faisal of the Maguanac security team.

“We haven't played together since the war,” Trowa said as he went to put the instruments back in their cabinet. “Right, Quatre?”

“It was pure chance we both knew that song when we met.”

“How do you know I wasn't improvising?”

Quatre didn't know.

And at that realization, after so many years, Quatre found himself speechless. He only wished Trowa had waited until they were alone to tell him that, so no one else would see the blush that was suddenly heating his cheeks.

“That just proves you're both men of many talents,” said Quatre's young aide, her hands clasped in front of her in admiration. “Not that we'd expect any less of gundam pilots.”

It seemed the gundams were one specter from Quatre and Trowa's past they would never be able to shake.

So they embraced them, sharing war stories with the group. Those that weren't still too raw after almost two decades of peace, hoping perhaps they could impart some wisdom on those who had been even younger than themselves during the Eve Wars, and whose memories of that time were shaped more by newscasts and professors than personal experience.

The more senior members of Dorothy's staff had stories of their own to share. As did the Maguanacs, who had stayed on Earth when Quatre first returned to space in order to secure his and Wufei's mobile suits.

Their accounts of the action riveted the younger people present. Even Quatre hadn't heard some of the details before. At some point, however, two straight days of travel caught up with Quatre and he drifted off against the arm rest of the sofa into a deep, dreamless sleep.

By the time he woke to some degree of consciousness, just about everyone had left. But not Trowa. He looped Quatre’s arm around his neck and hoisted him to his feet, a tender “Come on, Quatre, let’s get you to bed” murmured in his ear.

“What time is it?” Quatre managed to yawn. Not that the hour meant the same on Earth as it did in space.

“After midnight.”  
  
“Just a touch of shuttle-lag,” Faisal said. “We can take him from here, Master Trowa.”  
  
“ ‘Master Trowa’?”  
  
“Did I overstep, sir?” Quatre could all but hear the Maguanac’s blush.  
  
Just as he could hear Trowa's curious smile.

“Not at all,” Trowa assured Faisal as he handed Quatre over to the care of his own men. “I just haven’t been called that in a very long time. It takes me back.”

Trowa wasn't the only one. Through his half-asleep haze, Quatre could still see the teenage boy who had put up such a cold front to keep him at a distance. He'd studied Quatre through his hair with those clear green eyes—when he thought Quatre wasn't looking—just the same way Catrina had studied him today. Trying to decide for himself if Quatre was friend or foe.

But those furtive looks had also given Trowa away: He had made up his mind on that question almost as soon as Quatre'd made up his.


	2. Hourglass of a Sad Color

“It really is a circus out there,” Quatre said as he slipped back inside the dressing room. “And for once I don't mean the media clamoring at the gates.”

It seemed all of Trowa's old coworkers from the traveling circus had shown up for the wedding—everyone short of the lions, and Quatre would have believed it if Trowa and Dorothy had argued for their inclusion as groomsmen. It was a curious mix of politicos and aristocrats on one side of the aisle, entertainers and roadies, ex-mobile suit pilots and Preventer agents on the other.

To speak nothing of the redundant layers of security. In all likelihood, the real reason the lions had been left at home.

“I warned Dorothy about this,” Trowa said. “I'm going to look like a clown at my own wedding.”

He looked nothing of the sort. In his ivory suit with gold trim and gold waistcoat, a white orchid in his lapel, if anything, Trowa looked like another one of Dorothy's matching accessories. Or closer yet: a trophy soon to be tucked under her arm.

But it would have done his nerves no good if Quatre told him that. Quatre knew his old friend wasn't comfortable appearing in public like this, as himself, or some version of it, with no mask or costume to disappear behind. But it was a condition Trowa was learning to accept as Dorothy Catalonia's partner.

“You think this isn't all going precisely as she planned it?” Quatre said instead. “Knowing Dorothy, half the fun will be seeing the looks on dignitaries' faces when they realize they're rubbing elbows with fire-eaters and contortionists.”

 _Anyway,_ he thought, _to me, you look like a prince_.

It was almost as if Trowa could guess what he was thinking. While he was staring at Quatre, out of the blue, Trowa laughed.

“Come here,” he said, meeting Quatre halfway.

Before Quatre could ask what was the matter, Trowa pulled his tie undone and started redoing it. “I'm surprised you of all people never learned to tie a bow tie properly.”

Quatre couldn't help feeling a bit defensive. “I don't know about you, Trowa, but I don't usually wear bow ties to work. And even when I do . . . You know, you're the first person who's said anything to me about them.” And when did Trowa become such an expert on formal dress himself?

But if Trowa hadn't been a self-made expert already, the practice he got attending grand functions with Dorothy had undoubtedly made him one. Quatre sobered at the thought.

There was no one else in the room—Duo and Wufei having gone down to join the others—and nothing to distract Quatre from the weight of Trowa's hands against his collarbones as he tugged and smoothed out the silk. Nothing to keep Quatre from watching Trowa's eyes beneath their long lashes as they concentrated on his work, their depths exposed like sunlight through a summer pond. The slight smile that pulled at Trowa's lips when he was satisfied pulled in turn at Quatre's heart, as if it might leap out of Quatre's chest and follow Trowa when he pulled away.

Thankfully, he didn't. Not yet.

“There,” Trowa pronounced. “Now you look like a best man. Not just a good one.”

He was so beautiful.

Quatre didn't say that out loud either, but not for the first time did that truth resonate with such conviction inside him that it was all he could do to swallow the words down. He wondered, as he often did, if Trowa knew just how beautiful he was.

But of course he did. He had to. Otherwise, how would Trowa always know how to use his beauty to maximum lethal effect?

Catching Quatre in his stare, Trowa took his hand and pressed something into it. “Here. I want you to hold on to this for me during the ceremony.”

Quatre didn't need to look to know by feel what it was. But he looked anyway.

His mother's ring. A simple band of golden gundanium. The engraved words _For Katherine, my forever,_ still ran around the inside.

“You kept it,” Quatre said of the inscription. “I thought you might have had the name changed.”

“Neither of us would have felt right doing that. That sentiment is part of the ring's journey. We're honored that you'd let us be part of that, so we couldn't very well erase it. Besides. What if one day you want it back?”

“No, I think Duo's right. I'm not the marrying kind.”

It surprised Quatre a little to know Dorothy was alright with having a strange woman's name on her wedding band. But he understood. Some history was too sacred to be erased, when holding on did no harm. Quatre felt a prickling behind his eyes that he tried to blink away.

“Katherine must have been a very special woman,” Trowa said, pronouncing the name as he would Cathrine Bloom's.

“ _Kat-tuh-reen,_ ” Quatre corrected, if only because he thought Trowa might like to know. “That's how I've always been told she pronounced it.”

Trowa's eyes widened in a silent _Oh,_ and he nodded. “We did have it resized—only slightly,” he confessed, as if Quatre's correction had dragged it out of him. “I take it your mother had very delicate hands.”

“Thankfully gundanium is a very forgiving metal,” Quatre said, in lieu of an answer he didn't really know. Neither did he want to talk about the mother he'd never gotten to meet on Trowa's wedding day.

Maybe it was that word, “forgiving,” that Quatre had said without any thought, but Trowa sobered. He still had not entirely let go of Quatre's hand, and now he folded Quatre's fingers over the ring and pulled Quatre's hand toward himself, held tight in both of his so Quatre couldn't easily withdraw it again.

“It means a lot to me that you're here today, giving me away,” Trowa said. His voice, always soft, took on a tenderness that made Quatre want to lean in, change his mind, refuse to let go after all. “I know Dorothy is grateful for that as well. Which is why I'll regret it if I never tell you, before we lose this chance—”

“Don't,” Quatre stopped him. “Please, don't say it.”

He already knew what Trowa wanted to say, and hearing the words out loud was only going to make today more painful. If only for Quatre.

“I know you think you need to unburden yourself,” he told Trowa, “but that's just nerves speaking.

“It's understandable if you're having doubts about going through with this,” Quatre said, recalling Heero's words to him that had given Quatre so much comfort. Words written in the days following the second ceasefire, but not read until more than a decade later. “But doubts don't mean you're making the wrong choice. They just mean you're human. We wouldn't be here if you didn't already know in your heart that this is the path you want to take.”

Trowa opened his mouth to respond to that, but he thought better of it, and lowered his eyes.

But he did not let go of Quatre's hand. The one with Quatre's mother's ring still in it.

For that fragile moment, which went on far too long, Trowa still belonged to no one, and Quatre could see two futures stretching outward from his friend. The one where Trowa let go of Quatre's hand, went downstairs, married Dorothy and in an instant became one of the most visible and powerful men in the Earth Sphere. Another as yet unwritten, that could start with that confession he had wanted to make, and take the two of them only God knew where.

But that was just an illusion. That future Quatre saw himself in—they had turned the lights off and locked the door on it years ago. He was only fooling himself, dreaming otherwise. The doubts Quatre spoke of—if he was honest with himself, they were his own, not Trowa's. It was time he let them go.

Quatre put his free hand over Trowa's, begging him with that touch to release him.

“Come on,” Quatre said, mustering up a brave smile, “we're up first. If we're not at our places on time, Dorothy might think you got cold feet.”

Trowa scoffed at that. “Have I ever missed my cue?”

“Well . . .”

“When we didn't have a mission, I mean.”

“Obviously, if Lady Une pulls you aside in the next five minutes and says the Colonies need you to save them, I'm sure Dorothy will understand your absence.”

“Or she'll order your Maguanacs to go after me and drag me back here, dead or alive,” Trowa said through a wry grin, and it warmed Quatre to know at least they could still joke like this.

It soothed the ache that much more when Trowa finally released his hand.

“Alright,” Trowa huffed, giving his costume a final once-over, a new mask beginning to slip into place. “Let's go get me hitched.”

* * *

Quatre woke feeling well-rested, the full gravity of Earth having worked wonders on his insomnia. Though that same force made getting out of bed seem like an onerous chore. The temptation to lounge in for an extra hour almost wasn't worth the fight. After all, he _was_ on vacation.

But nowadays even Quatre's vacations had stuffed itineraries, and he was eager to get a start on today's.

After breakfast with his team, he went looking for Trowa at the nearby hangar.

Instead, what greeted Quatre when he got there, looming in shadow behind the limousines and private jets, were two Taurus suits.

Their design may have been nearly two decades old, but their custom gold paint told it plain that they weren’t just leftovers from the war, relics to be admired from afar like museum pieces. These were maintained, ready to fly into action if the need arose.  
  
“I heard you might be here.”

Trowa’s voice announced his presence where his footsteps did not. A lot may have changed, but that hadn’t. He could still sneak up on Quatre like a cat. “Find what you were looking for?”

“Maybe a little more than I was expecting.” Quatre said with a nod at the suits, “Whose palms did Dorothy have to grease to be allowed to keep those?”

“You think Director Une would just ask her to kindly hand them over?”

“Good point.”

It did worry Quatre a little that where the Catalonia Group’s activities were concerned, the ESUN was content to overlook the mobile suit ban and let Dorothy do as she pleased. Which wasn’t to say Quatre worried a President Dorothy Catalonia would be likely to abuse her power. Only that he didn’t want to see the Earth Sphere slip back into authoritarian tendencies so soon.

“They're escort units. I've never seen them used since I’ve been here,” Trowa said.

“Don't tell me you haven't been tempted to take them out for a spin.”

“Maybe. Once or twice.” Trowa shrugged. “But it wouldn't be worth the hassle of explaining to the authorities why they're still here. If we ever find ourselves in need of extra security, I suppose it’s reassuring to know they’re available at a moment’s notice.”

 _God help us if we ever need their like again_ , Quatre thought; but the day was still young and he did not want to cast a shadow over it so early. 

“They’d be visible from space with that paint job,” he said instead. Keep it light.

“With any luck we would dazzle the enemy before they could mount an attack. Did you want to see my office? I assume that’s what brought you out here.”

It was indeed, and—both of them eager for a change of scenery—Trowa drove them to a facility on the other side of the grounds that Quatre couldn't see from the main house.

This place was a working shop with all the hallmarks of a newer construction, bustling with engineers in coveralls and crammed full of mobile suits in various states of assembly.

Quatre recognized the lot as Ursa excavators and Orion construction units—the latter bearing some resemblance to the OZ Pisces, as well as to the mobile suits that had been in service on L4's resource satellites for as long as Quatre could remember. Comprised of four powerful limbs attached to a minimal torso, with a head only as large as it needed to be to house the processor and sensors, the Orions were built for manipulating and stabilizing heavy loads, providing adequate protection and comfort for the operator, and little else. They didn't have to be aesthetically pleasing to get the job done.

They were unquestionably an improvement on their predecessors, with optimum functionality in vacuum. Quatre knew from previous discussions that Trowa wanted to make the Orions more versatile as well. When he was Heavyarms's pilot, the ability to switch out weapons in a matter of seconds had saved his life more than once. A single suit that could remove and replace arm or leg attachments in situ, the same way one switched out drill bits, would save valuable time and energy now being squandered on the ponderous task of switching out entire units.

Of course, automation would make the process even faster. But various factions within the Earth and Colonial governments, as well as the civilian sector, balked at the idea of resurrecting mobile doll networking technology, even if it would save hundreds of human lives annually. Operator error, sudden life support failures, impacts with near-Earth objects, and exposure to damaging levels of solar radiation made construction and debris cleanup in space hazardous no matter how much caution one exercised.

But was a modified ZERO system the savior those industries were looking for? Having had intimate knowledge of that system himself, Quatre had strong and conflicting feelings both ways.

For now, he was content to see how Trowa and his team were working around that problem. And proud, to see what his colony's resources had been transformed into. Prouder still of Trowa for leading that transformation. The admiration his team had for him was obvious from even the briefest of conversations Quatre shared with them.

After introductions, Trowa led Quatre upstairs to an office space that looked down on the hangar floor. Natural light poured brightly down on drafting tables and models. Thick glass walls filtered out most of the sound from the hangar, but not all of it. For Trowa, who was used to working side-by-side with mechanics and engineers and all their deafening equipment, the quiet in the office must have felt profound.

“It may not be much,” he said while Quatre looked around, “but it's home away from home.”

“This is quite the setup, Mr. Bloom,” Quatre said, the name stenciled on the door having not escaped his notice.

Trowa wasn't kidding about the place being a second home, either. There was a small wet bar with a high-end coffee maker and a mini-fridge, a couch pushed up against one wall. The old Trowa had made a home of much less. How many nights had he grabbed what few hours of sleep he could there, when he was too deep into his work to make the short drive back to the main house? “The Catalonia Group has spared no expense.”

“They're not the only ones with so much riding on this project.” Trowa crossed his arms as he leaned back onto a swivel stool. “If there weren't entire colonies relying on the work we do here, I might almost feel guilty about all the money that's being thrown in my direction.”

“The shareholders must be grateful for the return you've given them on their investment.”

“Perhaps. Neo-titanium doesn't come cheap. Even with the friends-and-family discount.”

Neither did trips to Mars, Quatre thought, noticing some of the photographs that Trowa had posted on his whiteboard. Of bleak red-brown, rocky vistas below an alien turquoise sunset, and candid shots with Noin and her and Zechs's twins.

“How was Mars?”

“Colder than Antarctica.” Quatre could hear Trowa's hint of a grin at that memory, a memory from long ago he wasn't as privy to. “Wouldn't be my choice of a place to raise a family. But I suppose when you're in exile, self-imposed or no, you have added incentive to make the most of wherever you land. And establishing a permanent human presence on the surface is crucial if Mars is to be our jumping-off point to the outer planets.”

“My father used to say that with a stable atmosphere and a reactivated magnetic field, and with enough time and human perseverance, Mars could become a second Earth for mankind.”

“That's a lot of caveats. From what I've seen, it's still a long ways off. Unless your father had some fast-growing algae or lichen stashed away in a lab somewhere that could do the hard work of terraforming for us.”

Maybe it was an overly optimistic opinion, but Zayeed Winner had been nothing if not an idealist. Quatre thought it rather ran in the family. Though, of secret stashes of terraforming algae, he knew nothing. “You have to remember, my ancestors were used to eking out a living where most people saw only inhospitable desert.”

Trowa hummed his assent, happy to concede that point to Quatre. “Which is why they were the right sort of people to colonize space.”

Looking around the office, most of the plans and models that Quatre's eyes landed on were familiar to him, if not from seeing the suits in use, then from the many hours spent over the last five years poring over blueprints with Trowa by phone.

But there was one design that did not belong with the others. The familiarity of it was what leaped out at Quatre. Where the Ursas and Orions were highly specialized, their functions clear at a glance, this suit's size, elegance, and human proportions made it impractical. For all but one purpose.

And for that reason, to a casual viewer, those plans might have seemed like nothing more than an exercise in nostalgic whimsy. But Quatre knew better.

“I've been giving your proposal some more thought lately,” he began, hesitantly, more conscious than ever of the transparent walls. “And, as much as it pains me to admit it, I think you're right. The world needs gundams, and I want to help you rebuild them.”

He couldn't blame Trowa for regarding him with some skepticism. “Weren't you the one who said you can't build a super-weapon and assume no one's going to be tempted to use it?”

“I know what I said,” Quatre said, recalling his first, and second, and fifteenth answer to Trowa's proposition. “And I would say it again. I still believe that to be true.”

“So, what changed?”

Quatre sighed. “Sometimes I think I was wrong to insist we destroy our gundams.”

“No,” Trowa was quick to correct him. “It was the right decision at the time. They had to be destroyed publicly if disarmament was going to work. As a sign of good faith. And to prevent that technology from falling into the hands of another rogue state.”

“But as a consequence, we left the Earth Sphere vulnerable. The gundams were humanity's last line of defense. What if another Quinze or Milliardo Peacecraft gets it in his head to drop a colony on Earth—or another Quatre Winner decides to enact his own misguided sense of justice on the Colonies?”

Trowa, not knowing what to say to that—or if he even had the right—remained silent.

“Who's left to stop someone like that? An entire army of Orions wouldn't be enough, and neither the Colonies nor Earth has the firepower. Even if they did, you put a gun in an Orion's hand and you have another Leo. You know where that would lead. We'd be right back where we were twenty years ago.”

Of course, Quatre didn't have to remind Trowa of any of this. Not when Trowa had been making the same argument for the last five years.

But there was still one person in the room Quatre didn't feel had been fully convinced: himself.

“I've narrowed down a list of satellites that you could retrofit as a base of operations,” he said. “They're old Winner Corp. mining facilities. The ore's mined out, but the basic infrastructure—gravity, life support, rad shields and propulsion systems—are still intact. It would be a simple enough thing to alter the books, mark them down as officially destroyed, shot into the sun.”

That, finally, won a lopsided smile from Trowa. “I thought you'd be uncomfortable with lying.”

Quatre couldn't help mirroring it. “I'm willing to stomach the guilt if you are. It's either that or we scrap the whole business. The public can't know what we're doing. The ESUN, the Colonies, Mars—no one can know or it would compromise the gundams' ability to act independently.”

“You don't think the threat of retaliation by gundam would be enough to keep potential terrorists and bad actors in line?”

Quatre had asked himself that question a hundred times as well. It was one that had to be carefully considered, as long as the chances of their secret getting out remained greater than zero. His left shoulder itched as he recalled his last run-in with terrorists, and they had been amateurs compared to White Fang and the Barton Foundation.

“If the world knew there were gundams again,” Quatre was certain, “someone somewhere would start a war to try and destroy them. Or worse: steal them for their own purposes. But without them, acting as a neutral party, purely as a weapon of last resort, humanity is defenseless against its own worst instincts.”

“So, if only to ensure the survival of human civilization,” Trowa filled in for him, “you'll agree to help me.”

Quatre nodded. “But it goes without saying we can't trust just anyone to know what we're doing.” 

Trowa wasn't going to like what he had to say next, but Quatre felt it was necessary: “I'm afraid Dorothy must be kept in the dark.”

“You don't really think I'd keep this from her—”

“She's ESUN, Trowa. If we're to succeed, she needs plausible deniability, not to mention the potential conflict of interest—”

“And you're President of L4,” Trowa shot back with a hard stare. “Unless you're telling me you'd walk away from the duties of the office tomorrow to join me.”

But he already knew there was no chance of that happening. Quatre needed to keep his connections intact if he was going to supply Trowa with gundanium and derelict resource satellites. For that matter, it would look suspicious if L4's president were to suddenly resign without scandal, while their deception's best chance at succeeding depended on the appearance of normalcy.

“Anyway, Dorothy already knows,” Trowa said in Quatre's telling silence. “She was the one who first convinced me resurrecting the gundams was in humanity's best interest.”

That stunned Quatre. But only for a moment. “She did always say she hated war.”

“And she sees the gundams' existence as our only insurance against some international incident escalating into another Eve War. The Preventer organization has so far been working precisely as it was designed, but it's a bureaucratic agency. It's inevitable that it will one day become too bogged down in political interests and red tape, and it will fail when we can least afford it to. We need to be ready when that happens, or someone else will.”

That sounded like Dorothy, through and through. As an elected leader with an entire cluster depending on him, Quatre was ashamed that he didn't see the truth of it much sooner. It was much easier to trust that the institutions that had kept the peace the last eighteen years would continue to do so for decades to come.

But then, Dorothy had always been better at predicting human behavior, whereas Quatre, ever the idealist, tended to get hung up on how people _should_ act. Human beings weren't always logical like mobile dolls. Rarely did they, when presented with a choice, choose the option that was best for most, or best in the long run. Democracy may have been the most humane form of government, but it was the duty of those who had the foresight and the material means to protect the masses, even if that meant protecting those masses from themselves.

Quatre had always believed that. It was why he became a gundam pilot in the first place, when doing so went against everything his family stood for. He knew his younger self would have agreed with Trowa, and been willing to pay the ultimate price, without question.

Now, however . . .

“You once told me the last thing you wanted to do was create another Trowa Barton,” Quatre said. “I feel the same. I don't want anyone to repeat the mistakes I made, or have to live with the guilt I bear every day. But you realize that's what we may well do if we see this project through, don't you? Assuming we can even repeat our predecessors' success and make the damn things operational, that is, and there's no telling how long that may take.”

“Anyone who pilots a gundam accepts that they'll bear the blame of the entire Earth Sphere,” Trowa said with a shrug. “As well as its hope. We've always known that. That's what makes the gundams uniquely positioned to negotiate ceasefires.”

But he was missing Quatre's point. Quatre shook his head.

“And who's going to pilot these gundams when they're needed, Trowa? You and me? Five years from now? Ten? Twenty? Will you still have the reflexes or the stamina necessary to complete the mission?”

It was a rhetorical question, and Trowa knew where Quatre was going with it, so he didn't bother answering.

It didn't just concern the two of them, either. Duo and Wufei they already knew they could trust, but Duo had a family now, and Wufei, a fulfilling career as a Preventer. Both had beaten the odds and found stability, a sense of purpose in peacetime. Perhaps neither would be inclined to throw those new lives away, in exchange for a return to the lonely, outlaw existence of a gundam pilot.

As for Heero, he might still have the ability, but they could forget about him willingly coming out of the obscurity he'd escaped into to help them. Anyone who wanted to get Heero inside a gundam again would have to first find him, drug him, and strap him down tight—and that would be the easy part.

“I can only hope for Catrina's sake that we don't see war again in our lifetime, and I know you feel the same way. But I also know you, Trowa. I know the kind of man you are. And you can't tell me that if war broke out twelve, thirteen years from now, you wouldn't put your own daughter in a gundam to put a stop to it.

“I know because I'd do the same thing,” Quatre said, as much to himself as to Trowa. “I'd never forgive myself if I had to sacrifice my own child for the greater good, but I'd do it just the same, knowing it was the right thing to do.”

 _Because I couldn't ask that sacrifice of anyone else._ Quatre almost shook thinking about it. It was such a cruel thing to suggest, after Trowa had invited him into his home, trusted Quatre with his daughter's acquaintance.

But the truth was often cruel. War and its calculus were cruel. It was why when Quatre even imagined having children of his own, he found the thought abhorrent and irresponsible. At best, another act of hubris, for a man who had already committed a lifetime's worth before twenty. He had enough sense of himself to know the kind of father he'd be. He knew any child of his would end up resenting him the same way Quatre resented his own father.

“I can't tell if you're saying you're onboard,” Trowa said, sidestepping that awful thought Quatre had left hanging in the air between them, “or that I'd do better to abandon the project now, while it's still in its infancy.”

What was he trying to say? If Quatre were merely listening to himself, he wouldn't know either.

“I just want to be sure we've thought of everything,” he settled for. “We need to know we can accept the risks, and the consequences, before we go down this road any further. Once there are gundams in the world again, there won't be any going back.”

“Then we'll just have to do everything in our power,” Trowa said, “to make sure it never becomes necessary to use them.”


	3. Like Venus Melting in the Morning

After their conversation that morning, Quatre feared he might have offended Trowa. They continued to be civil to one another throughout the day, but not overly warm. Even after nearly two decades, Quatre had a hard time reading his friend's mood, when Trowa did not want his mood to be read.

After dinner, they drifted their separate ways, with Quatre helping himself to a book from Dorothy's library.

He was only a few pages into it when there was a knock at the door. “Can we come in?”

Trowa's voice. Quatre almost laughed. “It's your house. I hardly think you have to ask my permission to go anywhere in it.”

“We didn't want to interrupt your quiet time,” Trowa said as he entered. And Quatre need not have worried about earlier. His warm smile was back.

Though that might have had more to do with Catrina. The toddler ran around the couch to Quatre, her little arms full of toys, which she juggled precariously while hauling herself up onto the sofa next to him.

“She really wanted to show you her toys,” Trowa said as he joined them. “But she couldn't narrow it down to just a few so we brought them all.”

So saying, he set a bin on the floor before picking Catrina up onto his lap. “You can tell me if now's not a good time.”

“It's no imposition at all,” Quatre said, and set aside the book he wasn't paying attention to anyway.

That was all the invitation Catrina needed—if, in fact, she had ever needed one—to launch into an introduction of her playmates. It was an eclectic mix of transforming robots, horses with brushable manes and more exotic stuffed animals, a dinosaur, a well-loved rag doll that might have been with her since she was an infant, and a black and white clown with sad-looking eyes in its painted-wood face. Quatre wondered if anyone had told Catrina yet that her father was once a clown like that.

Quatre absorbed all their names and motivations and backstories, though he was able to follow less than half of them. He was too busy marveling at Catrina's tiny voice, which was musical and exacting, just like her parents'. Catrina must have decided in the last twenty-four hours that Quatre was a person to be trusted, and now it was all coming out in a rush, no room to get a word in edgewise. Very soon, without needing any feedback from him, Catrina hopped down to play with her toys herself.

“No mobile suits, I see,” Quatre said when he was sure the little girl was no longer paying him any attention.

He immediately regretted it, his harsh words to Trowa that morning coming back to him like the echo of a sour note. It had been a cruel thing to say to a parent. Quatre felt as though he had already consigned Catrina to his own fate, just by invoking her name in the same breath as gundams.

Trowa, thankfully, did not appear to share that opinion. “I'm sure it's not very rational of Dorothy and me,” he sighed, leaning his elbow against the back of the couch, “but both of us had to grow up so quickly, just to survive. Cat doesn't even know what war is. Can you blame us for wanting to make that last as long as possible?”

Though, after a moment's thought, Trowa amended, “Maybe, when she's a little older, if she shows an interest in my work. . . .”

“If she does, you'll have her out in the shop with you the next day, getting her hands dirty in the real thing.”

“Am I that predictable?” Trowa said. But he smiled.

“Play with me, Daddy!” Catrina whined, pulling on Trowa's pant leg, and he got off the couch to join her on the floor.

Then she looked back at Quatre with a somewhat shyer, “Play with us?”

“I'm afraid I never really learned how to play.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Quatre realized how silly they sounded. And sad.

As if sensing the direction of his thoughts, Trowa told him, “That's alright. All you have to do is go through the motions. Cat will make up the story as we go along.”

Which she did, pushing a toy pony she'd named Snow White into Quatre's hands and telling him what his character was supposed to do. As well as correcting him when he didn't act things out right. Quatre wasn't used to taking orders from a three-year-old. He was a bit out of his element, to say the least.

Unlike Trowa, who followed Catrina's imaginary plot and all its logical inconsistencies like he could see it playing before his eyes, imbuing his tyrannosaur and stuffed tiger with different personalities, emotions, and even voices.

Quatre admired him wholeheartedly for it, though he felt the distance between them open up just a little more.

Once they had been two sides of the same coin: two gundam pilots set adrift on their respective suicide missions, finding their true family in allies along the way, and in each other. But since the war's end, different objectives and responsibilities had blown them in different directions, nurtured different sides of them, while the common cause that once bound them slowly faded away into irrelevance.

Maybe it was crazy to miss those days of chaos and terror, and heartbreak—but no, it was the brutal relief the war threw every moment into that made those peaceful ones, so few and far between, shine like the precious things they were. _That,_ that feeling, was what Quatre wished he could recapture. But at what cost?

“Do you love my Daddy?”

Those five simple words, uttered with such innocent curiosity and careful elocution, hooked Quatre's wandering attention and hauled him roughly back to the present.

To Catrina staring up at him, her toys and storyline momentarily forgotten until she received a satisfactory answer from Quatre.

He blanked. And must have gaped like a fish, looking imploringly at Trowa but finding no help there.

“Of course I love your father,” Quatre finally told the little girl, the words coming out with such truth to them he didn't know why he had hesitated to answer in the first place. “He's my best friend.”

Satisfied, Catrina went back to feeding her menagerie from the coffee table coasters.

Quatre turned to Trowa, looking for—what? A sign that that question had been all his idea? That Trowa would stoop so low as to rope his own three-year-old daughter into his plot to secure a confession?

“Don't read into it,” Trowa said. “She doesn't understand what she's asking.”

“I think she understands more than you give her credit for.” Quatre had recognized a knowing glimmer in Catrina's eyes, so like he saw in Dorothy's. Maybe Catrina didn't know about all sorts of love yet, but she knew her parents loved each other, and that they loved her, and that love was important. One sort was as good as any other at that age. “I just hope I passed her test.”

“You don't have to worry about that. I'm determined to make you Cat's favorite uncle. Though I should warn you, it's not going to be easy catching up to Duo. Even Wufei has a sizable lead on you at the moment.”

“That's hardly fair. They've had three years to get to know her. She's only just met me!” And even under the best of circumstances, Quatre didn't see how he was going to win in a contest with Duo, who was surely a master at playtime.

Eventually Catrina's nanny interrupted them to say it was past the girl's bedtime.

“The time must have gotten away from me,” Trowa said, unfolding himself to his feet.

He kissed the top of Catrina's head and told her he would see her soon before handing her over to her nanny, despite the girl's halfhearted protests that she wasn't tired and was having too much fun to sleep. Doubtless she would be out like a light before her nanny could finish tucking her into bed.

When they were alone again, Quatre helped Trowa to gather up the toys.

As he did so, he couldn't help but be struck by these new roles of Trowa's. Project manager, lead mobile suit designer—father wasn't by any means the lesser job title of the bunch. Maybe Quatre had been mistaken, passing Trowa off as tamed. He'd been too focused on the calm eye to see the well-orchestrated storm of activity swirling around him.

“I never thought I'd see the day you became a doting father,” Quatre said, meaning it as much more of a compliment than it sounded to his ears.

“To be honest,” Trowa said, “neither did I. When Dorothy and I discussed the possibility of having children, it always felt like something far off. Something the public would expect us to do one day, to cement Dorothy's legacy. I can't say either of us was particularly enthusiastic about it. But then we got pregnant, despite our best efforts, and . . .”

He trailed off with a fond smile.

“It just seemed right. Like it was meant to happen when it did.”

Something serendipitous. A happy accident.

Quatre thought of Duo and Hilde and their long struggle to conceive and carry their first child to term. Since the days of the first permanent settlements in space, it was the question of security that had most sharply delineated Earthlings from the new Colonists. And few things made a person feel more insecure than infertility: the inability to secure one's own legacy.

And here, for all Duo and Hilde's setbacks, and the work-arounds and sacrifices of Quatre's own parents, a child had come all too easily to those who weren't even entirely sure they wanted one. Simply because of where they lived the majority of their lives.

“It might sound like a contradiction,” Trowa went on in a small, distant voice, “but Catrina's birth only made me more determined not to create another Trowa Barton. Nothing I ever do will make up for his sins, but I have a chance with her to do something good with the rest of my life.

“And it's terrifying. More than you can ever know until you've been there, Quatre. The pressure to get it _right_ —”

“Like holding the lives of every person in a colony in the palm of your hand?” Quatre said.

But Trowa shook his head. “No, it's a different animal entirely. Cat's the purest thing I've ever made. If for no other reason, sometimes I still can't believe she came from me. And I can't help thinking there are a million ways this could all go wrong. Like—how can someone like me deserve to be this happy? There must be a catch.”

Or maybe, after all they'd survived, a little happiness was precisely what they had coming to them.

“You sound like you're over the moon,” Quatre said, forcing a smile. Guilt welled up in him again, and this time he couldn't just swallow it back down. “I shouldn't have said those things to you this morning—”

“You didn't say anything I didn't need to hear,” Trowa cut him off. “I've been telling myself for three years I can insulate Cat from this gundam business, but . . .”

He paused in thought as he picked up the stuffed tiger—perhaps seeing another face in its striped, white-and-orange one.

“History has a way of showing us that what can will happen. Maybe it's time Dorothy and I revisited this topic, now that our circumstances have changed.”

And before they had a chance to give Catrina any more siblings, Quatre thought. So far Trowa had said nothing on the subject, but that didn't mean he wasn't already thinking about adding to his young family.

As for Dorothy, she wouldn't allow being elected to the highest office in the Earth Sphere to deter her from having another child. Knowing her, she would see it as a mark of pride to give birth in office. How many presidents in history could boast the same? She would undoubtedly find a way to turn motherhood to her advantage.

Yet another reason for Trowa to adore her. After all this time, it still pained Quatre to see how well-matched his two old friends were. Like a stab through the gut that never fully healed. And yet he loved them both too much to ever root for their partnership to fail.

“What are we doing, Trowa? Why am I really here? And don't tell me it's to play uncle to Cat or discuss the future of mobile suits.”

“What do you mean?” To his credit, Trowa _almost_ seemed genuinely taken aback by the question. “You had some time off planned, and Dorothy suggested you spend it here—”

“Yes, I'm sure it was all her idea. I'm sure she'd leave the two of us alone and virtually unsupervised out of the goodness of her heart.”

Trowa stilled at the sharpness in those words, before setting the last of the toys, the clown doll, gently in the bin.

“It _was_ her suggestion, whether you choose to believe that or not,” he said when he straightened, and met Quatre's eyes. “It's been four years since you and I really had a chance to talk—and my wedding was hardly the time or place for candor. A lot has changed since then. Then again,” he shrugged, “a lot hasn't.”

 _Not this again._ Quatre's breath came shallow in his chest. “Some things are better left unsaid—”

“I disagree. This life goes by too fast to spend it tiptoeing around our feelings, just because we're afraid they'll hurt. You taught me that once. Even if it's taken the last few years to remind me how true it is.”

Quatre backed up half a step, but he wouldn't run from this, or from Trowa's unflinching stare. Not anymore.

“I still love you, Quatre. I never stopped loving you.”

Neither had Quatre ever stopped loving him.

But knowing the truth and saying it, hearing it, ensuring it could never be taken back or argued away, were two different things.

“And what good does telling me do, huh?” Trowa may have felt unburdened by the confession, but it was Quatre he left carrying the load. “I can't do anything about it now—”

“You _can._ ”

“I won't,” Quatre bit out. “We've been through this once before, remember. Except now you're a married man. I will not be responsible for driving a wedge between you and Dorothy— _because_ I love you.”

“She and I discussed it. Thoroughly. She knows you're always going to be first in my heart, and that doesn't diminish what I feel for her. I can't say she's entirely okay with that, but she understands and accepts it. We have her permission—”

“So, what, we can get each other out of our systems while she's away?”

Trowa's only response to that was a shrug. And here Quatre thought he was being sarcastic.

“What about Catrina, then? She has two living parents, under the same roof, who love her very much. That's more than you and I ever had. I'd never forgive myself if I did something to damage that.”

“You're not going to take that away from her, Quatre. This wouldn't change anything.”

“Damn it—but permission isn't the same as approval!”

Trowa fell silent then. Surely he hadn't run out of arguments, just realized the futility of continuing.

But he stared back, disappointed and defiant. Just the way he always seemed to from out of Quatre's memory. As if waiting for Quatre to say something else—the right thing, the magic word that would make everything all better, but neither one of them knew what that word was. Try as they might, they never had been able to figure it out.

“Then, I guess there's nothing left to say,” Trowa said in a small voice. And turned to leave.

Suddenly, Quatre was terrified to see him go. Afraid that—what? Trowa would walk through those gilded doors and disappear forever?

Then again, it was a large enough house. He just might. “Where are you going?”

“To tell my daughter good-night.”

But Trowa paused, his hand on the door.

“I'll come find you after. You have fifteen minutes to think it over. If you still haven't changed your mind . . . Well. I guess I'll take that as my cue to keep my distance.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes hadn't gone by so slowly in years. Like waiting for a sortie to start, wondering if he'd be the same person when it was all over. Quatre spent most of that time moving restlessly around his room from one seat to another, wishing the Earth would speed up in its rotation and put him out of his misery.

Until the knock on the door. Then fifteen minutes wasn't long enough. He wasn't ready to make this decision.

But he opened the door anyway, stepping back to let Trowa in before solemnly shutting it again.

Quatre's nerves must have been obvious. “I almost brought a very expensive bottle of wine along as a peace offering, before I remembered you don't drink,” Trowa joked flatly.

Neither of them felt like laughing.

It wasn't the best time for Quatre to tell him about his newfound appreciation for artisanal spirits. It didn't feel like a time to say anything frivolous.

Instead, Quatre latched on to Trowa's sleeve and pulled him close, and wrapped his arms around Trowa's shoulders. Surely this was OK, he told himself. They weren't breaking any vows embracing.

The weight of Trowa's arms folding around his waist came a moment later without any hesitation. It was all Quatre could do not to sob out the breath he felt as though he'd been holding ever since he set foot in this house.

“I miss you so much,” he whispered against Trowa's shoulder. “I think I've spent most of my life missing you.”

So much time wasted, believing there would be other opportunities, other reasons for the universe to lay their paths across one another. Plenty of time to figure out why just looking at Trowa's face wounded Quatre so deeply. Plenty of time to find him somewhere in the vastness of space, and wait patiently for Trowa to remember him again.

 _The lies we tell ourselves._ Quatre never should have run from that pain. He should have embraced it like he embraced Trowa now, and never let go. After that duet when he was fifteen years old, and first felt the stirring inside himself of something exciting and terrifyingly new. Back when he had every chance. Before each mission that could have been their last. Before they lost their minds, or their memories of one another. Before they both ran out of luck, or went their separate ways for good. If not then, when?

Trowa's hands soothed their way up Quatre's spine, but went no further. He'd already been clear: The next move wasn't his to make.

 _If not now, when?_

When simply holding on wasn't enough to make him feel real, Quatre combed his fingers through Trowa's hair, traced the column of his neck, the contours of his face, pressing temple to temple, cheek against cheek. To take his hands off Trowa now was unthinkable.

And when touch was no longer enough, Quatre bent his head and kissed Trowa's mouth. Until Trowa tugged at Quatre's clothes. Then kisses proved not enough, either.

They made love like they should have years ago. Slow and deliberate, as if they still hadn't left those battlefields of space. As if one careless move might propel them away from one another, send them tumbling through the void back to their respective worlds. The same weightless feeling in the pits of their stomachs, despite all the gravity of Earth pulling them together.

They must have laced their fingers together out of that same unspoken, irrational fear. When Quatre surfaced from a brief, blissful bit of sleep, he found them linked like that, their legs still entwined.

And Trowa wide awake, watching him, welcoming him back to consciousness with a smile.

“You knew all along, didn't you?” Quatre chided him. “That I wouldn't be able to say no to you?”

“Well. I had my hopes.” Trowa's fingers arpeggiated self-consciously between his. And it warmed Quatre to hear Trowa's voice as hoarse as his was. “I missed you, too.”

Quatre only slipped out of his hold when Trowa leaned in to kiss him again, and then only so he could pull Trowa tighter to him. The leg Trowa had left draped over Quatre's hitched higher, and Quatre felt certain he had already slept enough for the night.

* * *

Trowa was still there beside him when Quatre woke again. Fast asleep this time, his face a mask of peace, hair fanning softly on his pillow.

Watching him, Quatre wanted nothing more than to sink back down into the warmth beneath the sheets and wait for Trowa to wake. To see what dawned in his eyes when they opened and Quatre was the first thing they saw. After the years it took them to get here, Quatre wasn't ready for this night to end.

But the longer he lay there, the more he started to feel like a trespasser once again.

_"Do you love my father?"_

While he slept, another Catrina had asked him that same question inside a dream. This one, a willowy young woman of perhaps fifteen, looking very much like her parents had at that age, when their playthings had been gundams and mobile dolls instead of toy horses and stuffed tigers. A simple band held back her short platinum hair, and clear green eyes stared fiercely into his. Daring him to answer her accusation.

Quatre hadn't known what to say. If he said no, she would have rightly called him a liar. And if he said he did, she would have told him that, if that really were true, he would not have acted as he had: selfishly. He wanted more than anything to apologize for hurting her, but that would have been the same as admitting he'd known from the start that what he was doing was wrong. It seemed as though anything he said would spring the trap on himself. It was not a test he could pass.

Haunted by that thought, Quatre got up. Quietly gathered a fresh change of clothes and dressed in the bathroom. Gently closed the door of his suite behind himself and padded down the hall of the guest wing.

A few of his staff were already up—Quatre wasn't sure some of them ever slept—and they offered to have a pot of coffee brought to him. Quatre accepted, taking his tablet to one of the myriad sitting rooms, where he could be alone with his thoughts and catch up on the morning news and email, watch the sunrise lighten the sky through the tall windows.

Before long, his coffee arrived.

And not long after that, a big, fluffy golden cat, who helped himself to Quatre's lap without bothering to wait for a by-your-leave, and promptly settled down for a nap. Being, if anything, even more unused to animals than he was to children, Quatre thought it safest to do his best impression of a piece of furniture, and let the cat do as it pleased.

That was where Trowa found him a little while later.

“Working on your vacation?” he said from the doorjamb where he leaned, wearing last night's clothes.

Quatre smiled at the still-sleepy warmth in his voice. Even as few as five years ago, Trowa would have reproved his sitting with his back to the door. Yet another sign of how things had changed. “Just answering mail from Rashid,” Quatre told him.

“In that case, give him my regards.” With those words, Trowa invited himself over. “I see Leo found you.”

Leaning over the back of Quatre's chair, he scratched the golden cat around the ears, earning himself an irritated glare.

“Leo?” Quatre said. “Named after the mobile suit or your coworkers at the circus?”

“Why not both?”

Why not, indeed. Or perhaps it was neither. Quatre had to admit, the big tom cat—wearing Dorothy's favorite color, no less—did rather resemble his namesake.

The cat was just a pretense. Now that he was there, Trowa took what he really wanted. His hand rested amicably on Quatre's shoulder, but the kiss he pressed to the side of Quatre's face was a reprise in pianissimo of last night's passion.

Quatre closed his eyes, trying to recapture those feelings. Until he realized, just a little tilt of the head and he could capture them in real time, in the press of Trowa's mouth to his.

But he let the opportunity slip by. All too soon, Trowa pulled away from him. Leo, determining this room was no longer a good one for napping, excused himself with the curtest of meows.

Trowa came around and leaned against the table across from Quatre, helping himself to what was left of Quatre's coffee.

“Sleep well?” he asked as he refilled the cup. Just a hint of a coy grin at the corner of his mouth when his eyes flickered back to Quatre's.

“That might have been the first dreamless night I've had in years,” Quatre lied, eager to sweep the visitation by his own personal sphinx, and her riddle, under the proverbial rug. “Certainly since I took office.”

“Well then. Here's to more like it while you're here.”

If only it were as simple as that. As Trowa handed Quatre back the cup and saucer, the glare of the rising sun settled on his wedding band, burnishing it like a hot ember. The effect might have lasted only a second, but it was long enough to leave an afterimage burned into Quatre's retinas.

“Trowa . . . about last night. . . .”

Trowa's smile fell slowly at his tone. “Do you regret it?”

He made it sound as though he didn't care either way, but Quatre knew it would have wounded Trowa if he said yes.

“I don't regret what we did.” That was the truth. Quatre would treasure his memories of last night for the rest of his life. If he regretted anything, it was that last night hadn't come much sooner. “But that doesn't mean we were right to do it. No matter what Dorothy may have said about being alright with us sleeping together—”

“You don't think I made that up, do you?”

The question momentarily took Quatre aback. “No,” he blinked. “Actually, it sounds like just the sort of thing she would say.”

However, that did not excuse their taking Dorothy's permission at face value, as carte blanche to begin an extramarital affair. Quatre was too used to Dorothy playing devil's advocate. She might have given Trowa her consent just to see what he and Quatre would do with it. “I just can't imagine anyone in her position would really be fine with this arrangement. Not in the long run.”

This wasn't the way Trowa had been expecting this morning to go. It was clear on his face when he stood, and made his way over to the window.

It was an annoying habit of his, letting Quatre have the last word, even when they both knew he was wrong. Maybe Trowa did it intentionally, knowing if he left Quatre alone long enough with his guilt, Quatre would punish himself enough for the both of them.

Or maybe Trowa just needed time to choose his words.

“You've known Dorothy longer than I have,” he said to the lightening sky. “Would you say there's anything you're capable of that she isn't?”

Quatre chuckled over the rim of his coffee cup, thinking back to Libra, and to their (all too brief) school days during the First Eve War. His and Dorothy's constant bickering over policy and the interpretation of recent history had led the press to deem the two of them old enemies, though the opposite couldn't be more true. It seemed whether with swords or with words Dorothy almost always trounced him, and Quatre could no more hold it against her now than he could then. “I'd have to be a fool to think that.”

“And yet you were willing to share me with someone else,” Trowa said. “What makes you think Dorothy can't do the same?”

Quatre could find nothing to say. Just as in his dream, he had fallen into a trap of his own making. And rather liked where he landed.

Not so fast. This was just Trowa trying to set his mind at ease, Quatre's guilty conscience reappeared soon enough to tell him, as it was always ready and eager to do. Just Trowa trying to convince him that crossing an uncrossable line wasn't nearly as grave a sin as it seemed. So he'd be less hesitant to do it again.

But Quatre had been crossing uncrossable lines since he was fifteen years old. For all his angst, adultery had proved remarkably easy. Maybe the person Quatre was really concerned about wasn't Dorothy after all.

“And what about you, Trowa?”

“What do you mean?”

What did Quatre mean? He shook his head at himself.

He wasn't sure what he had expected his stay here to be. Between discussing resurrecting the gundams and that awkward duet Trowa had forced him into, the last few days had made Quatre feel like a teenager again. He could almost be forgiven for believing he and Trowa were still the same people they were then, catching their breath together in some safe house before the fighting started up again.

But that was just wishful thinking on Quatre's part.

Watching Trowa with Catrina was what settled it: Those days are past. Not coming back. Nor should Quatre have been wishing them to. It was a terribly petty thing, he realized, to be jealous of a three-year-old, but Quatre couldn't deny the empty feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw the way Trowa looked at his daughter.

Like nothing mattered more than her happiness.

And Quatre couldn't even fault him for it. That was just how it should be.

“After everything that's changed in your life, are you sure there's still room left in it for me?”

For a long moment, Trowa said nothing.

Then, “I see,” in a small sigh of a voice, as if lamenting to himself. “Is that where we are, then?”

He turned and leaned back against the windowsill, crossing his arms over his chest as the early-morning rays warmed the side of his face.

But Quatre recognized the wry smile trying to work its way onto Trowa's lips. “You're going to have to help me out here, Quatre. What more is it going to take to convince you?”

A long walk in the fresh air and full gravity would make a decent start. Maybe another shot at that duet in the music room later. Outside another day dawned clear and ripe for the enjoying, while the last of the twinkling colonies faded into boundless blue.


End file.
